My Best Tunes

The injuries sustained in a road accident while touring in support of 2006’s Mo’ Mega album rather derailed the momentum of this fearsomely intelligent but pessimistic “conscious” rapper, whose self-assessment here as being “over-skilled and understated, often underrated” is more accurate than most hip-hop boasts.

Sixto Rodriguez may represent the most unlikely disinterral of hidden hippie rock genius since the likes of Drake and Buckley became household names.

As she waited to go on, Souad Massi looked nervous for the first time that evening. The Algerian singer, who has endured abuse, exile and even death threats from extremists in her career, admitted that she was scared because she did not think the audience would be used to seeing a woman jumping up and down on stage.

“It’s always nice to hear a musical pioneer just relax… you can tell the band is playing with a smile, and Bob Dylan is enjoying his troop as well as every nearly-perfect or heartfelt, misshapen note that they’re performing.” - Mike Ragogna, huffingtonpost.com

Just as he had to get past the songs on Mona Bone Jakon in order to get to the material for his major breakthrough with Tea For The Tillerman, explains Yusuf, so did he have to work through the songs on his comeback album An Other Cup in order to reach the more satisfying condition represented by Roadsinger.

They may hail from San Francisco, but trance-rockers Wooden Shjips have clearly left their hearts elsewhere – in the mid-70s Germany of Krautrockers Neu! and Can, and in the New York of Suicide and the Velvets.

Hot on the heels of Lady Gaga, La Roux and Florence and the Machine, there’s another neon-edged siren poised to make her assault on the pop charts. The snappily monikered thecocknbullkid (one word, no capitals) is a homegrown Kelis, peddling gilded electro-pop tunes that have been quietly tickling the fancy of those in the know for a while now. From her rightfully hyped appearance at Glastonbury in 2008 to a show-stopping turn on Jools Holland last October, thecocknbullkid has charmed anyone with ears.

Twice before I have written about the prodigious output of members of Deerhunter in their various side projects, but now all four members of the band are back as one. Following the ‘Microcastle/Weird Era Contd’, double-album of sorts – one of the best releases of 2008 – the band will put out the ‘Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP’ on 8 June. The Gorilla Vs Bear blog has a track from it at http://tinyurl.com/dkkpxv, which sees the band continue their rich vein of good form, with clanging guitars and percussive clicks coming to the fore.

The Manic Street Preachers have long guarded the lyrics written by their lost fourth band member, Richey Edwards. Now, 14 years after the 27-year-old disappeared from the Embassy Hotel in London’s Bayswater on the day before he was due to fly to America with vocalist and guitarist James Dean Bradfield for a promotional visit, they are releasing a new album consisting entirely of his lyrics, called Journal for Plague Lovers.

With opening lines demanding “Dementia, you better treat me good/The human race is going through a second childhood,” it initially seems as if Conor Oberst’s latest album might involve a continuation of the infirmity themes which dominated his solo debut last year.